Mendel's principle stating that one trait is dominant over the other recessive is known as what?

• A. Law of Independent Assortment
• B. Law of Segregation
• C. Law of Hybridization
• D. Law of Dominance

Answer: (D)

Dominance describes how one allele masks the expression of the other in the organism’s phenotype. In Mendel’s pea crosses, the allele for tall height is dominant over the allele for short height. So an organism that has one tall allele and one short allele will appear tall because the tall-trait effect is enough to express the trait. The short trait only shows up when both alleles are the recessive short version. This is the essence of the principle, which is why tall often appears in the offspring even when a recessive short allele is present. The other laws describe how alleles separate into gametes or how different genes sort independently, not how a dominant trait masks a recessive one.